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Workhouse to Nursing Home: Residential Care of elderly people in England since 1840

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

David Thomson
David Thomson
Affiliation:
Department of History, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
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Abstract

Statistics of the movement of elderly people through institutions of care have attracted little attention from present-day researchers, and none at all from historians. The intention in this paper is to indicate some of the analyses which the historian can make, to explore the changes and continuities in the inmate populations of institutions over 120 years, and to speculate upon the reasons for the higher and lower incidences of residential care amongst the old in specific periods. The questions of interest here are how many and which groups amongst the old have been in care in different periods; how many people would ever find their way into institutions in old age: at what ages would they enter; for how long would they stay in care; would they die in care or leave for other reasons; what are the reasons for taking the elderly in to care; and what does all this tell us about the society in question.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 43 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

NOTES

1 The standard history of the Poor Law and its workhouses is still Webb, S. & , B., English Poor Law History, Longmans, London, 1929.Google Scholar

2 A substantial portion of the argument and detail of this paper is drawn from Thomson, D.,‘Provision for the elderly in England 1830 to 1908’, PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1980.Google Scholar

3 The most useful guide available to the many classes of Poor Law records is Part I of Somerset County Council, Records Committee, A handlist of the records of the Boards of Guardians in the County of Somerset, Somerset County Council, Taunton, 1949.

4 Return… of the amount of workhouse accommodation in each Poor Law Union, for the year ending 31 December 1854: Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP) 1854–5, XLVI.

5 Unless stated otherwise, all figures of populations and their ages used in this paper are derived from the published census volumes for 1851, 1861, and subsequent 10-yearly censuses. Subsequent references to this source will not be acknowledged.

6 The 1 January and 1 July numbers of persons in workhouses are given in the annual reports of the Poor Law Commissioners (to 1847), the Poor Law Board (to 1871), and the Local Government Board (from 1871).

7 Calculations of the patient-days spent in workhouses have been made from the manuscript registers of individual workhouses.

8 Townsend, P.The Last Refuge – a survey of residential homes for the aged in England and Wales, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, tables A-C, pp. 505–15.Google Scholar

9 Indoor Relief Lists, Bedford Union, 1836–1927, and Admissions and Discharges Registers, Bedford Union, 1836–1929: Bedfordshire County Record Office classes PUBR 1 and PUBV 1.

10 The 1841 census does not give populations according to Registration Districts, which were identical in all but name to the Poor Law unions - in 1841 these new units of administration were still too new and untried to be accepted by the census takers. The 1841 populations of Poor Law unions have here been calculated from a mixture of 1841 and 1851 materials.

11 Master's Report and Journal, Bedford Union, 1842–4: Bedfordshire CRO class PUBV 6. The Workhouse Master attributed the whole of the disturbances in the workhouse in the early 1840s to the separation of husbands and wives.

12 Third Annual Report, Poor Law Commissioners, p. 37: PP 1837, xxi. The position was further clarified in a return titled Workhouse Rules, p. 5: PP 1844, XL.

13 The legal position on the separation of aged couples is summarised in appendix II, Report of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor: PP 1895 xiv.

14 Two official returns were prepared on this question: Return of the number of married couples above sixty years who are inmates of workhouses: PP 1852–3 LXXXIV, and Return of unions in England and Wales which have acceded to the non-separation of aged couples: PP 1863, LII.

15 Townsend, , op. cit. table 55, p. 279.Google Scholar

16 Harris, A.Social Welfare for the Elderly, HMSO, London, 1968, vol. 1, table 30, p. 92.Google Scholar

17 Workhouse Death Register, Bedford Union, 1835–42: Bedfordshire CRO class PUBV 37. The numbers of deaths occurring at different ages in the various unions are all available in the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

18 Workhouse Deaths Registers, Leigh ton Buzzard Union: Bedfordshire CRO class PULBV 27.

19 Workhouse Deaths Registers, Ipswich Union: East Suffolk CRO class DD1/44/3.

20 Workhouse Deaths Registers, Samford Union: East Suffolk CRO class ADA7/CB3.

21 Workhouse Deaths Registers, Warwick Union: Warwickshire CRO class CR51.

22 Townsend, , op. cit. table 110, p. 528.Google Scholar

23 The most complete guide to the subject of life expectation and its changes over time is available in the Supplementary Reports which the Registrar-General issued from time to time, in conjunction with his Annual Reports. A useful introduction to the statistics of life expectancy is Benjamin, B.Health and Vital Statistics, Allen and Unwin, London, 1968, pp. 92–115.Google Scholar

24 The changing course of mortality rates, 1840–1970, can be traced in Registrar-General, Statistical Review of England and Wales, for the year 1971, pt 1, table 4.

25 All of these points have been developed more fully in Thomson, op. cit.

26 The analysis of the changing values of pensions is an extension of the original doctoral research, and has been undertaken during 1982 as part of a rewriting of the earlier work in preparation for publication. A term as Post-Doctoral Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has made this rewriting possible. The source of the calculation of pension values is an assemblage of 25 ‘family expenditure surveys’, dating from 1837 to 1979. From these the average resources available to English men and women have been recalculated, and it is against these estimates of average incomes that the value of a contemporary pension can be measured.

27 Ministry of Labour. Cost of Living Advisory Committee, Report of an enquiry into Household Expenditure, 1953–4. HMSO, London, 1957, table 8.

28 Department of Employment, Family Expenditure Survey, for 1979, HMSO, London, 1980, table 6.Google Scholar